SAO PAULO (AP) — No wonder the United States is having problems scoring at the World Cup: The Americans are hardly attacking.
Coach Jurgen Klinsmann is eager for the U.S. to create more chances in Tuesday's second-round game against Belgium.
The...

With his team down to 10 men for nearly an hour, Keylor Navas made sure Costa Rica's last line of defense held firm.
The goalkeeper came through with a string of stops in regulation and extra time and then made the only save in a penalty shootout to...

The 2014 World Cup officially gets underway Thursday in Brazil when the host country takes on Croatia at 1 p.m. PDT on ESPN.
But what about the rest of the games? Are you trying to plan your days so you can watch all the matches? Below is the entire...

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Luis Suarez is the best soccer player in the world.
That's not opinion, it's science.
Or at least it's the science compiled by Bloomberg, which analyzed players in Europe's top five leagues, measuring everything from defensive and attacking responsibilities to the level of competition. And those measurements found the Uruguayan striker is better than Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Those measurements also go a long way toward explaining why soccer fans across Uruguay have...

Mario Balotelli tweeted that he would welcome a peck on the cheek from Queen Elizabeth II as a reward if his Italy team kept alive England's chances to advance in the World Cup by downing Costa Rica.
Final score: Costa Rica 1, Italy 0. Does this mean the queen will respond on the royal family's Twitter account that she'd like to slap Balotelli's wrist?
Balotelli bore much of the blame in the listless Italians' setback, which placed the tournament long-shot Costa Ricans in the knockout bracket and...

The sport known as football almost everywhere beyond our borders bears few similarities to the USA's heavily padded version. Here is one timely likeness: The roll call of ailing players scratched from the tournament is long enough to resemble the NFL injured reserve list.
Let's rechristen this World Cup the World of Hurt. In fantasyland, a lineup of inactive luminaries could be assembled that, if miraculously healed by Thursday's opening match and run through a token practice, could contend for the...

Costa Rica was supposed to have gone home a long time ago.
Before Brazil, it had qualified for only three World Cups, making it out of the group stage once. It was no better than the third-best qualifier from its own region.
But Saturday the little Central American nation won a ton of respect — and almost came away with the berth in the World Cup semifinals — by playing the Netherlands to a scoreless draw over 120 minutes, only to lose in penalty kicks, 4-3, in Salvador, Brazil.
Backup...

Arjen Robben made a mistake. No, not diving -- a habitual act of folly perpetrated by the fast Netherlands forward -- against Mexico. It was Robben, while casting himself as an honest man, acknowledging afterward that he dove. (Which literally makes it an honest mistake.)
As any good coach would, Jorge Luis Pinto used media interviews before his Costa Rica team's quarterfinals run-in with the Dutch to harp on Robben's theatrical falling. Any dive today, he suggested, deserves a yellow card.
The...

Viewers with no dog in the fight between the Netherlands and Costa Rica might have asked themselves: Do we pull for the big, bad favorite that ascribes to a delightful brand of soccer or root for the heartwarming Cinderella whose ultra-defensive approach is a style only a doctoral student of soccer could visually withstand for two hours?
The relentless beauty beat the admirable beast on a penalty kick shootout-with-a-twist. The World Cup moves on to a Wednesday semifinal that drips -- the Dutch vs....

He was a big part of the team's spine, the backbone of a high-energy attack that had Brazil poised to win a record sixth World Cup in next weekend's final.
But now that Neymar's own backbone has been fractured, Brazil's title chances may be broken as well.
There is reason for hope. Other teams with far less talent and far less depth did remarkably well in this World Cup without their stars.
Colombia, which lost star striker Radamel Falcao to knee surgery last winter, made it to the quarterfinals...